engaging stories of hope and joy

New Eyes

There are eight million artist stories in the city. This one is mine. This one is called “New Eyes”.

Six years after I gave up alcohol and drugs I was living in an apartment over a garage in Concord, Massachusetts. It was the middle of the day and I happened to notice movement out the window. When I turned to look, a cardinal had flown to the window ledge and was sitting there. It was so red. It was, in fact, unbelievably red, redder, almost, than anything I could remember seeing. Certainly redder than any cardinal I had ever seen. After a short while it flew away, but the memory stayed. A couple of weeks, or maybe it was a couple of months as 24 more years have come and gone, I was standing in front of a group of people, at a podium, and I said that in the process of stopping using alcohol and drugs and all the work attached to that effort, I had been given new eyes. Same old world, same old people, same old birds, just me seeing everything differently. I have gone on to tell the cardinal story many times over the years, today even in fact, as one way of expressing ever-growing gratitude in my life.

New eyes

Four years ago I found myself living with a woman – soon thereafter my wife — in Portland, Oregon, she encouraging me to pick up a paint brush, stick it in some acrylic paints she had lying around, and do something. Slowly — little by slow — the painting took hold of me, made me it’s own, sent me off in yet another direction in my life. And you know what? It gave me new eyes. Artist eyes. Clean and sober I saw the same old world in a new way. As an artist I saw, I see the new world in a different way. Not quite sure how to do justice describing my newest of eyes, my 65 year old eyes, you’ll just have to trust me. It’s true.

These artist stories, every Friday, typed with wrinkly old hands and thought up by a brain whose cells, the ones still here, struggle just to wake up sometimes, will look at this unexpected journey. Look with new eyes.

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This is my Blog, my opportunity to say what I think and write what I feel. The content has morphed in the two years of existence -- I began with personal tales of sillyness and drunkeness and soberness and times, places, and events within. Then I wrote a whole a lot of opinions about the world and its often sad shape, and how I thought we could make it better (re: engaging stories of hope). More recently I've taken to writing about this and that, including links to movies, Ted Talks, rock and roll, other writers' web pages, and more. These past seven years I have taken up the life of a painter, and my work can be seen on my web page ( www.buddycushmanfineart.com ) and my Etsy shop (www.etsy.com/shop/musicflower67). But I've been writing since I was just a young thing living on the Massachusetts coast, and storytelling is my home. I have a number of fiction works in varying degrees of completion, and have published two books of fiction in the last year, under the name W.B. Cushman. But it's here I get to share my whatevers of sorrow and hope, and hopefully, wonder and magic. Thanks for stopping in.